


A Mark in Time

by busaikko



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Asexual Character, Community: kink_bingo, Emotion Manipulation, Episode: s02e06 Trinity, Friendship, Furry, Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-29
Updated: 2010-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:38:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns Rodney on; John gets something else out of it.  (mention of canon Rodney/Katie)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mark in Time

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by skaredykat. The links are there just FYI, they don't add anything to the story except [explanatory](http://xkcd.com/471/) visuals. And if you end up ordering any _kigurumi_? Enjoy!

If I make a mark in time  
I can't say that mark is mine  
I am only the underline  
of the word

(Tuesday's Dead, Cat Stevens)

  


* * *

Rodney loses his virginity at an anime con in 1983 to a girl dressed as a [_kitsune_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune). She has black-tufted fox ears and three knee-length fluffy tails held on with a belt under her skimpy and unauthentic [_yukata_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukata). By the end of the con weekend, Rodney has furry white cat ears of his own and a thing for being called _sama_ in bed.

He still has the ears four years later. He wears them to a physics department Halloween party. He uses a red bandana to make an oversized hairbow that he ties in front of one ear, and he wears his _CHOOSE THE FORM OF THE DESTRUCTOR_ t-shirt. He ends up spending the night with an Indian postdoc who a) is male, b) gets (and _gets off on_) the stupid [Hello Kitty](http://feministing.com/imageStorage/hellokitty1.jpg) joke, and c) is dressed head to toe in a homemade [Energizer Bunny](http://blogout.justout.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/energizer_bunny2008-med.jpg) suit. Gautam really does keep going and going (and coming and coming), and Rodney finds himself with a boyfriend until his exchange term runs out. They part on good terms, and he makes Rodney the world's most awesome _ever_ plush tentacled [Cthulhu suit](http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=cthulhu+costume&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=bM9MTICvJYnovQP-k427Cg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQsAQwAA&biw=1280&bih=636) as a farewell gift.

He still has _that_ when he works in Area 51, because he finds it relaxing to go to cons and lord his Elder Godliness over lesser mortals. It's a pain to keep clean, especially after his cat decides that it's kin and sheds on it in glee, and Rodney has to teach himself to sew to make necessary repairs. But people love touching the tentacles, in and out of bed, and who is Rodney to deny them a night enacting their favourite anime rape fantasies? He's generous that way. Kind of a local legend.

He can't bring either his cat or his Cthulhu suit with him to Atlantis. He does have a couple of fleece pull-overs and some hideously ugly faux fur-lined room socks that are good for jerking off, as well as nostalgically hard to clean.

But he works with people who, as soon as there is no threat of imminent death, set up a very detailed sex forum on the main server. He knows that there are already people discussing the possibility of hiring locals to make stuff out of real fur and leather, as well as a guy from Japan's SDF whose personal item is a [Pikachu costume](http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i.techrepublic.com.com/gallery/55997-338-600.jpg&imgrefurl=http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-1035_11-55995-2.html&usg=__gTZ3rceugdDkforTDbiPAJujalo=&h=600&w=338&sz=37&hl=en&start=0&tbnid=w1nuo_V0WzmCtM:&tbnh=167&tbnw=91&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpikachu%2Bcostume%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D636%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=517&vpy=230&dur=9169&hovh=299&hovw=168&tx=119&ty=215&ei=qc9MTKPLH5DZcZSr4ZwM&page=1&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:18,s:0) with -- as far as Rodney can tell from the pictures -- really well-made ears and tail.

Rodney'd be interested, except the posts also talk enthusiastically about electricity play. Thinking about Pikachu Thundershocking his genitalia makes Rodney cringe.

But when he's in Colorado, after the Wraith siege ends and Sheppard doesn't die, Rodney finds some decent [kigurumi pyjamas](http://www.capsuletokyo.com/mise/index.php?keyword=kigurumi&Search=Rechercher&Itemid=32&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse) at the local mall. He buys them for old times' sake, as well as a lot of weird imported Japanese stuff that he can use to torment the people he works with.

When the Daedalus beams their personal shipments down to Atlantis, Rodney's still angry with Sheppard for shaking and baking him in the F302, and all Sheppard has for luggage is one stupid duffle bag. Rodney shoves one outsized wheelie bag at him and then the heavier of the cardboard boxes, snaps a terse, "Carry these for me," and marches out of the gate room without even looking to see what stupid face Sheppard is making.

Just like with his underlings, Rodney expects his order to be followed. And Sheppard is maybe caught off guard, because he delivers Rodney's stuff without even making whiny noises about wanting to be thanked.

What he _does_ do is flip the suitcase down in the center of the room and say brightly, "Let me help you unpack."

Rodney starts to snipe that of course it's locked, but Sheppard is poking something into the lock mechanism with one eyebrow raised thoughtfully. The lock goes _snick_, and Sheppard flips the top open.

"I have no beer," Rodney protests, thinking too late of all the things he wants to secretly hoard. He shoves his boxes under the desk and hides them behind his chair, and then has nowhere to sit but on the bed. "Touch my coffee and you die, likewise the chocolate, and seriously, Major, in what creepy part of the world are you from that it's okay to run your hands lovingly through your colleague's underwear?"

"This is underwear?" Sheppard asks dubiously, ignoring for the first time the chance to be insulted by Rodney's refusal to remember his new rank. He pulls the Hello Kitty _kigurumi_ up by the shoulders and frowns.

"You had better fold that properly when you put it back," Rodney says, muttering "_raised in a barn_" as Sheppard examines the ears on the hood and the mittens, which can be unbuttoned and attached to the wrists, both practical _and_ cute.

"Is this a present for someone?" Sheppard goes on, and Rodney sees him check the tag at the back of the neck for the size.

"_No_," Rodney says, and then for some reason starts telling Sheppard about the _kitsune_ girl and goes on from there. He doesn't know if he's trying to make Sheppard very, very uncomfortable, or if it's a hideously awkward form of bonding because Sheppard told him about his own stupid sex life after the Chaya thing. Sheppard apparently doesn't like sex, at least not with other people.

Sheppard doesn't get uncomfortable at all, though. Instead, he gets that little thinking-hard line between his eyebrows. "What's the appeal?" he asks, slowly.

Rodney starts to say something pretentious about being the character or subverting the character, and then stops. Sheppard thinks that a fully-clothed mindmeld with an Ancient was the best intimacy of his life, ever. Sheppard is missing so much that Rodney nearly feels sorry for him.

"You should try it," he says.

He's totally not prepared for Sheppard to light up and say, "Really?" while he's already stripping out of his uniform jacket, or to prefer the mitten option, even though that makes doing the front buttons difficult. Sheppard flips the hood up. Rodney chose the winter-weight fabric because it's thick and soft, and now there's a big pink stuffed fleece bow perched jauntily on the side of John Sheppard's head.

Rodney's natural instinct is to mock, and mock hard. He can't help it, the same way he thinks lemonade smells good even though it's liquid death. But he feels kind of responsible for Sheppard, who's trying to adjust the hood so he can see and turning towards Rodney's mirror, so he restrains himself.

"Stop that," Rodney says. "No mirrors until you're secure with your character." Sheppard opens his mouth, and Rodney tells him to zip it. "Hello Kitty, no mouth, also? Cat," he says.

Sheppard ducks his head, which is kind of weird because then Kitty's eyes are staring right at Rodney, big and oval and framed by three whiskers on each side. Then Sheppard takes a step forward, and another, and slides past Rodney to curl up on the bed, eyes shut and mitten-pawed hands curled lightly in front of his face.

"Oh, my, god," Rodney says. In ten seconds, Sheppard's destroyed any possibility that Rodney will ever wear the Kitty _kigurumi_ while jerking off. "Damn you for being so adorable." Sheppard still has his eyes shut, but he rubs one cheek with the back of his paw. . . hand. "Oh, for fuck's sake," Rodney sighs, and scratches Sheppard behind the ear.

Sheppard makes a grumbly noise of approval. Rodney scratches some more. Sheppard, the ingrate, falls asleep. He stretches as he sleeps until he's taken over the whole bed and pushed Rodney off. Rodney puts away all his new stuff, hiding and booby-trapping the edibles, hanging a few more of his degrees and awards on the wall, adding more journals to his tottering stack of things to read. From the suitcase that Sheppard violated he pulls out his even-more-awesome-than-Kitty dinosaur _kigurumi_, which has a great swishing tail, sharp teeth, and a predatory gleam in its embroidered eyes.

He's hanging it up when Sheppard wakes, with a yawn and a back-arching stretch that looks utterly decadent. Sheppard rolls off the bed, takes off the _kigurumi_, and hands it to Rodney, who bitches about the wrinkles that are probably there even if he can't see them.

"Dinner?" Sheppard asks, and Rodney suddenly realizes that he's starving.

After that, Rodney finds that the most significant discussions he has with Atlantis' military commander are generally one-sided, taking place while Rodney's petting him absently and Sheppard is in Kitty-guise, either purring or sleeping, or more usually both. It isn't until after Rodney asks Katie Brown to dinner that he's hit by the horrible, horrible thought that maybe Sheppard thinks that they're dating and Rodney's cheating on him.

Rodney barges into Sheppard's room in the middle of the night to ask, and the conversation with Sheppard is a tangle that goes from "So do you think -- ?" to "Do _you_?" with a sharp turn into "But what about -- " that Sheppard deflects with a scrunched-up Muppet face and the offer, "We could stop."

"But it's not sex," Rodney says, and feels hideously like he's possessed by Chaya. The only clothes that have come off so far are shoes and a jacket, obviously it's not sex, but it's incredibly more intimate than anything he does with his other friends.

Sheppard looks like he's trying to keep his game face on to hide that he's appalled. "It's just hanging out," he says.

Rodney thinks if they talk any more, he will probably do something inappropriate, kiss Sheppard or kill him. "Okay," he says. "Um. I'm going to start dating Dr. Brown from Botany."

"Great," Sheppard says, and yawns pointedly.

So everything is fine and normal, inasmuch as anything on Atlantis is normal, until Doranda, when Rodney demands not only Sheppard's professional trust but his personal trust as well, and uses both of those to fuck up worse than he ever has in his life.

He likes Katie. She's smart and funny and pretty and will probably sleep with him; he could fall in love with her. But Sheppard is smart and funny and has saved Rodney's life and Rodney's saved his. Sheppard's integral, like a compass that Rodney's learned to use. Sheppard's true north isn't the same as Rodney's, but he knows where it is and where he should be in relation.

And he's always been secretly smug that he knows Sheppard like no one else does.

He forgets, sunk into self-recrimination, that Sheppard knows him just as well.

Two days after Sheppard tells Rodney that the damage to their friendship-slash-whatever-ship isn't fatal, Sheppard shows up in Rodney's quarters just when he's getting ready for bed.

Sheppard looks at Rodney's boxers and t-shirt, and at his watch.

"Depressed people sleep more," Rodney says defensively.

"Can we," Sheppard says, and does that unattractive thing with his mouth, like he's biting down on his own lips. It reminds Rodney too much of those bodies found in tarpits, or something, with their mouths sewn shut.

"Try to use your feeling words, Sheppard," Rodney says.

Sheppard nods seriously and goes over to Rodney's closet-like wall recess. Rodney's heart skips beats, because it's just unfair to drag Hello Kitty into their relationship problems.

Sheppard holds the _kigurumi_ out. "Your turn." Rodney must look like he expects to be beaten up and have humiliating photos and videos posted online, because Sheppard does the lip thing again and shakes his head. "I need," he starts, and then stops.

Rodney hears, _I need you to trust me_.

Rodney takes the warm armful of soft, soft fabric and steps in carefully. He feels a bit like a trespasser. The dinosaur one is _his_; Sheppard must notice that it gets wear, but he's never asked just what Rodney does in it. Rodney doesn't want to say, because he knows Sheppard doesn't get turned on the way he does, and he doesn't think there'd be any value in normalizing one of their completely opposite experiences of the same thing. He keeps repeating this in his head as he adjusts the shoulders, because it's like being surrounded by the way Sheppard feels and smells. Rodney's both deep-down sad and also aroused, which is a rotten combination.

Sheppard steps forward to do up the buttons, the way Rodney does for him sometimes. He unbuttons the mittens but leaves them covering Rodney's hands. Rodney doesn't mind. He's very sure this isn't a hands-on orgasm project.

Rodney opens his mouth to ask just what they're doing, but Sheppard makes a classic librarian shush, one finger over his mouth, and pulls the hood up over Rodney's head. He takes Rodney's hand and guides him over to the bed.

Sheppard kicks off his boots and settles himself with his back to the headboard. "Come here," he says, and pats the bed between his legs.

Some day, Rodney will try to explain to Sheppard just why everyone thinks he's a flirt and a cocktease. He's pretty sure Sheppard will be embarrassed. He really doesn't notice when he's being suggestive.

Today, though, Rodney just does as he's told, in total Kitty silence. He tries not to touch Sheppard, but Sheppard pulls him around so that Rodney's curled against Sheppard's shoulder. One hand scratches idly at the hood over Rodney's head, and the other strokes long down his back, neck to waist, careful never to rub him the wrong way.

Sheppard clears his throat. "I suck at talking," he says. Rodney would agree, except that right now he can't. He snorts instead. "I've never had a friend like you," he says. After a bit of a pause, Sheppard goes on, "You really impress me. Not just how smart you are. Even though you are. Smart."

He keeps talking, in short little bursts that ramble from brave things that Rodney's done to funny things he's said. Sheppard has a very good memory.

Rodney keeps waiting for a _but_, the inevitable _You're intelligent, but. . . _, or _You're right, but. . . _, or _You try hard, but. . . ._

Sheppard never says it. At first, Rodney thinks it's a fluke. He waits for it. Then he starts, very cautiously, to hope. When poor Sheppard is growing hoarse and desperate, nearly twenty minutes later when he's trying to compliment Rodney's taste in sarcastic t-shirts, Rodney finally gives in and relaxes and stops adding his own mental _but_s. He shifts around a bit, figures Sheppard must at some point in his life have been molested by a cat, and starts kneading Sheppard's leg with one paw. Hand. Whatever.

Sheppard jerks, and then lets his breath out sharply. His hand slides down from Rodney's back for a quick tummy-scratch. Rodney gives him an encouraging purr.

He's almost asleep when Sheppard says, voice so low he probably hopes to get away with not being heard, "If you don't know I love you then you're fucking stupid. And you're not stupid."

The hood is down past Rodney's eyes, comfortably dark. He's not sure what part of Sheppard his face is pressed against, shoulder or cheek or stomach, but he gives it a lazy rub with his cheek, settling in.

He wakes up with a start when Sheppard shifts, probably because his ass has gone numb, or maybe because Rodney has drooled a large wet spot onto his pants, right where Sheppard's dick would be if he dressed to the right.

"Sorry," Sheppard says, wriggling free and pressing a fist to his lower back as he limps towards Rodney's bathroom. Rodney gets up and takes off the _kigurumi_.

When Sheppard emerges, still trying to stretch out cramps unobtrusively, Rodney tells him to get ready for bed and asks which side he sleeps on.

Sheppard pauses with his pants unbuttoned and only held up by inertia. "Whichever side means I don't get your dick up against my ass in the morning."

Rodney shrugs. "I think of you as my sister in spirit, Sheppard." Sheppard breaks into loud, surprised laughter, and Rodney grins. "Your ass is safe."

"Good to know," Sheppard says with wry humor, and gets under the sheets.

Rodney slides in next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and that's how they fall asleep, breathing in slow unison.

 

.: .: .: .: .: .: .:  
the end  
:. :. :. :. :. :. :.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I got the plushie/furry square and kind of went, _huh_, thinking of [ geek hierarchy cartoons](http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/uploaded_images/geekchartbig-719641.gif) and then. . . . thinking of my friend F (awesome panda suit) and my friend E (home-sewed his own reindeer) and my relative P (Chuckie Cheese). And it may have been for Drama Club, but I did make and wear a dog costume, with paws and ears (it was a lot more awesome than the bedsheet I wore as the Ghost of Christmas Future in the previous show). And then I thought of Rodney McKay. . . and realized that just as every dueSouth writer has a post-Call of the Wild fic in them, so every SGA writer has a Doranda fic.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Breathing in Slow Unison](https://archiveofourown.org/works/324642) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific)




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